WHAT LONDON LACKS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3355, 3 January 1927, Page 8

WHAT LONDON LACKS.

(By a Provincial.)

An abominable place! That is what I, just up from the provinces, want to nay about Loudon! It’s all nonsense, t know, distressed vanity, and thu' sort of thing, but there it is. In the provinces, even in a city the size of Cardiff, with its quarter of a million inhabitants, a man need achieve very httle to become a “character” known and recognised as a personality by scores of people who have never spoken to him and never will. But London is so vast that in order to be anyone at all you have to be a very great* person indeed —and even then, probably, cue average Londoner Avould never look ,«u you. De never looks at anyone! That s wnat strikes the newcomer more than anything—the Londoner’s lack o or •Unary human curiosity, his eoncenfcrai.ion upon anything rather than that wnidi is actually about him. In restaurants he either discusses rapidly and intimately with a friend, or sits huddled over a book propped up beside his plate; in buses and trains he reads a newspaper avidly, intently, as though against time. Kvcn when he has nothing to read and no one to talk Co lie sits gazing before him with a fixed, unseeing stare. Perhaps be mis seen so much that be cannot lie in revested any longer, that nothing can surprise him he lias reached a final sophistication. Perhaps it is just that ho is suspicious: he knows that there are so many rogues about that he distrusts his every neighbour.. Only yesterday, in the Strand, I noticed an old woman, very poorly dressed. huddled in a corner beside a shop window, crying bitterly to hersoll. Xo one took any notice of her; rut one spoke to her. .1 didn’t myself. I passed on lather hurriedly, thinking. “This is London! She may he simply a beggar. trying to attract attention.'’ Possibly sjie amis, but in Cardiff. I kiioAV, not' only myself but a number of others would have paused, [tartly to see if there was anything we could do, and partly from sheer curiosity. This lack Avill probably be the [trimary impression ol many visitors, but others, ) scarcely less escapable, are: '1 ho complicated organisation of every aspect of existence, and its relentlessness. in London a man can only live b, adapting himself to the machine, dbe endlessness ol the suburbs. It Inis io be seen to be realised. ’The number of places of entertainment, and the number ol people who seem to have nothing else to do but stand in theatre queues Irom morning fill night. 1 lie extraordinary courtesy and helpfulness of the tram conductors, but conductors and policemen, as opposed to Hie impersonal manner adopted by all otbet offieia l.“ Yes. London has many unpleasant ways and customs, and yet ... ! am sure that i shall come to love d in I lie end !

An important event in the history of Esperanto is the publication of the whole of the Bible in the international ’alienage by' the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Bible Society of Scotland. The Old Testament translation was made by Dr Zamenhof. the author of .Esperanto, direct from tin Hebrew.